We originally overlooked the Samsung Galaxy S when it was announced because everyone was focused on the Sprint EVO 4G unveiling. After the hype finally settled down, we realized the Galaxy S has the specs to turn heads and it definitely deserved a closer look. After reading all the passionate comments on 7 reasons to choose the EVO 4G, we decided to highlight some exclusive features of the Galaxy S and give you a few reasons to hold out for this Android phone.

1. Super AMOLED display

The Galaxy S features a 4 inch Super AMOLED display.

The EVO 4G offers a larger display at 4.3 inch, but we are more excited about Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen. This new technology offers a super bright picture that consumes less energy than a traditional display. The only major knock on AMOLED displays is their visibility in direct sunlight, but Samsung says they addressed this issue with their Super AMOLED technology.

The main advantages of Samsung’s Super AMOLED vs traditional AMOLED:

20% brighter

80% less sunlight reflection

20% more battery life

At 4 inches big, the Samsung Galaxy S features the largest Super AMOLED display available.

2. Internal storage of 8 or 16 GB

This message makes me sad.

Some people went nuts when we posted the rumored specs for HTC’s Incredible which showed the device might come with more than the traditional 512 MB of internal storage space we normally see on Android phones. The EVO 4G improved in this area with its 1 GB ROM and the Galaxy S now raises the bar with16 GB of internal storage. Customers who purchase the Galaxy S will not have to worry about running low on space after installing a handful of apps.

3. Fastest Android phone announced

The Samsung S5PC110 chipset is codenamed Hummingbird.

There is still some controversy about the actual chipsets included inside the Galaxy S (because they were left off the official press release), but Samsung is claiming it will be the fastest Android phone. Samsung’s Omar Khan said the device would have three times the graphical processing power of the Snapdragon platform (which powers the Nexus One and EVO 4G).

“There is no faster processor in the market. It processes a staggering 90 million triangles per second, which is more than three times more powerful than leading smartphones in the industry.”Omar KhanSamsung Mobile

We are still awaiting official confirmation from Samsung, but all signs point to the S5PC110 “Hummingbird” chipset being used in the Galaxy S. This application processor was jointly developed with Intrinsity and they claim it is the world’s fastest Cortex-A8 based processor. The S5PC110 combines a 45 nm Cortex-A8 core with a dedicated PowerVR SGX graphics processing unit (believed to be the SGX540).

Also left off Samsung’s press release is the amount of RAM used in the Galaxy S. I have read conflicting reports of 256 MB or 512 MB and we are still awaiting confirmation.

4. Thinnest Android phone

The Galaxy S is only 9.9 mm thick.

Those people who complained the EVO 4G might be too large will enjoy the slim form factor of the Galaxy S. The phone measures just 9.9 mm deep, which Samsung claims is the thinnest touchscreen smartphone. Samsung was able to achieve this slim size thanks to the Super AMOLED display.

5. Improved battery life

The S5PC110 processor uses a 45 nm low power fabrication process.

The EVO 4G and Galaxy S both use the same size 1500 mAh battery, but Samsung has some technical advantages which should help their device last longer.

The Super AMOLED display offers 20% more battery life vs a traditional AMOLED display (like the N1) and even more power savings over the older TFT display of the EVO 4G.

Most CPUs in Android phones still use the 65nm production process, but Samsung has already made the move to 45 nm. I’m no expert on CPU architecture, but smaller transistors draw fewer watts and the 45 nm die size should offer lower power consumption.

Reasons to skip the Samsung Galaxy S

The Super AMOLED display and faster GPU might be enough to win some over, but I’m sure many people will be sitting on the fence until we have more concrete details on this device.

A few of the reasons to pass on the Galaxy S and keep dreaming about the EVO 4G include:

S Life / TouchWiz 3.0: We don’t know enough about Samsung’s custom UI for Android 2.1. The last time we saw TouchWiz on an Android phone (Behold II), reviewers outright rejected it.

5 MP Camera, no HDMI out: Megapixels are not everything, but the EVO 4G does have an 8 MP camera. We will have to wait and for some hands on time to see which camera comes out on top. The Galaxy S allows media sharing over WiFi (DLNA), but it does not have a mini HDMI port like the EVO 4G.

No United States carrier yet: Samsung said the device is coming to the U.S. later this year, but we do not have an official carrier yet. The EVO 4G should hit the market first and users could be left waiting awhile on the Galaxy S.

No 4G: The Samsung Galaxy S supports HSDPA 7.2 for 3G data and that is it. I don’t know if anyone cares about “4G” data yet, but now that the EVO has it we are going to measure other phones against it.

How do you think the two phones stack up? Is it more important to have a faster network (4G WiMax) or go with the best display (Super AMOLED)?

Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He resides in Dallas and carries the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One as his daily devices. Ask him a question on Twitter or Google+ and he is likely to respond. | Ethics statement

It’s entirely based on the owner’s experience over a certain brand, I can’t say Samsung is the best phone nor the worst phone either for I have used its older models (you know those 2001 analog models) and its still working ‘miraculously’ today.

Actually, its a pretty even split between 1.5/1.6/2.1.
you forget, every android phone with a custom UI (sence, motoblur, Touchwiz, ect) runs on 1.5 right now. Only the higher end phones like the nexus and Droid run 2.1. Every other phone runs 1.6.

That should be fixed this year as they should all be running 2.1 by the end of the year…. at least until 2.5 comes out.. LOL

I was thinking the same thing. This could be the phone for Tmo it would make perfect sense with the phone not supporting 4g and Tmo using the HSPA+….though I think they(Tmo) has serious love for HTC so who knows¿

I was thinking the same thing about the HSPA+. If this thing comes to TMo (please, please, please, please!) then it could totally say 4G, shmor G! I was thrilled to learn that TMo’s faster network would work with existing phones (like my Cliq XT) and this would be an excellent fit for that scheme. TMobile needs some high-end devices in a bad way.

I have a galaxy at present, and I was rather disapointed with it for quite a while, however since the last update (Still 1.5 but a lot of fix ups) it’s become a very capable phone. If it wasn;t for me being on this existing contract for another 12 months I’d be very happy to move up to this Galaxy S, give me a fast device with an excellent screen over faster cell data any time. Any real data intensive stuff i tend to wait for a full wireless location anyway, and for the rest even EDGE is good enough.

Oh, also, the standard Galaxy has a 5MP camera and the pictures are actually pretty good, better than any other phone I’ve had my hands on, as always with digicams the lens quailty far our weighs the MP.

I agree with the article, I don’t see what is wrong with this phone other than the crappy UI, but this is the advantage of Android, some dev will have other roms running on it before it even releases. This will be a great phone with a stock 2.1 (or maybe 2.5 or whatever the N1 has when the Galaxy lands). The screen looks amazing, I love the form factor, and the internal storage just makes it that much sweeter.

This phone sounds awesome, but mainly due to the screen and internals. By the time it’s released however, I’d imagine there will be other manufacturers pumping out similarly spec’d phones. I can’t see waiting for this phone in particular, but I can see waiting for another phone with similar features.

I think this sounds like one amazing phone. I’m excited to see the speed at which android continues to move. Manufactures are getting it right continuing to release good hardware. I’m excited to see more and more great developers join us in the ranks of android development.

I prefer the Samsung to EVO 4G. Moreover we all know sprints 4g network is being rushed to get some customers to stay. all other manufacturers will get 4g next year and before I move to that I would rather see a year of no issues.

I don’t know about others but samsung has served me well. I used my blackjack 1 and then moved to BJ2 before getting omnia i910 and now will wait for this if it comes on time. I don’t have a problem waiting since my contract is not up till jan2011 which I know a slew of phones will be available for me to choose.

Would people stop whining about megapixels already? It’s been known since forever that the ideal range is 4-7. Anything more to that and they actually make it worse. 8 is pretty questionable especially in a crappy phone.

I’m not upset that I jumped on the N1 for a number of reasons, but one thing I keep hearing is “4G this and 4G that”. By the time 4G will be wide spread enough to be an important buying decision these phones we have will look like the G1 does today.

I suppose EVO has almost the same design as its flagman HD2 (8mp in EVO vs 5 mp camera in HD2 means it is even worse)

So….let’s continue

6) HTC is known (in HD2) for terrible inter-modulation distortions. And did you know this? The worst of all are its THD which reach 5-6% (!!!) which is 20 times worse then for example iPhone’s ones. Forget music quality. It’s just a cr@p. Do not believe? Look at GSMarena site

7) HTC HD2 (which is last tiny quack of this company) has strong decay in sound frequencies above 10 kHz

8) HTC video is just a cr@p, sorry. Not possible to see it on the normal TV screen without tires for basically trashed scene. It’s not 720 or VGA or even QVGA. The closest equivalent in resolution is 200 x 150 pixels

9) THC can not play DivX at 30 fps (slow processor). This is why it is not certified by DivX but Galaxy is

10) It’s not a HD phone. Even HTC HD2 basically is not HD phone, its screen does not fit HD ratio (for which it has to be 480×853 or so)

11) HTC photo cameras are tr@sh. Again do not believe me? See the same review GSMarena or other sites for comparison. I do not see magenta color spots like in GSMarena but darker light pictures still lose the color

12) The Snapdragon 1 GHz processor in HTC is basically not faster then in iPhone’s one despite the smaller clock.
Of course Snapdragon can go dual core but it is not there.

13) HTC HD2 screen has the same brightness (and even worse contrast) then in iPhone. If EVO is the same – too bad for EVO

14) Typical best latency for WiMAX is 120-150ms. Only ones in a while i saw 85+ ms or so. Not acceptable for games anyway, has to be 50ms max, better 20ms

And because Snapdragon 1 GHz is still there, no Divx, and damn laggy surfing in EVO guaranteed. When you scroll HD2 with its same processor for example it’s clearly annoys and disturbs you by not doing that smooth enough.

The words “Snap”, “Dragon”, the number 1GHz sound and look good, but actually it’s very slow POS, it’s graphics subsystem is unacceptable. I am really surprised how reviewers did not see that. Factor of 2 or 3 more still obviously needed. Thanks to this site, it was the first and completely right by noticing that.

I’ll pass on the Galaxy, reason being I got the Samsung Moment when it came out, took it back when it kept getting into some bogus Airplane Mode and locked out the phone. Samsimg and Sprint never did fix that crippled phone.

The idea of paying the nearly double AT&T rates for coverage but NOT jumping to an iphone seems silly.

The idea of moving from Sprint’s excellent 3G coverage area and no-cost data roaming to T-Mobile’s anemic 3G network (not calling it slow — just saying it is TINY) is even worse — that’s simply something I won’t do. (My wife is on TMO on a G1, and the really small coverage area is enough to make her finally say she absolutely will not be on TMO when her contract is up — kind of hard to enjoy a smartphone when your 3G is gone more often than it’s there, especially when you live and work in the heart of the 14th largest city in the United States.

If the Galaxy S were coming to Sprint, I’d certainly jump on it. If it had a keyboard, it would be a no-brainer. But honestly, there’s no other network that will persuade me to buy something so close to an anticipated release of a new iphone — not necessarily saying I’ll go to an iphone, just saying I want to wait and see how it changes the game.

On the other hand, if the EVO or Galaxy S were available to purchase today from Sprint, I’d probably go ahead and purchase. The longer they take to get it out the door, the worse they’ll fare against the iphone4 rumors.

good article but I HATE how you ended it praising Sprint’s 4g network as soon to be the best. The network is poorly built and doesn’t deliver close to the promised speeds. T-Mobiles HSPA+ network will be launched by the time sprints network rolls out nationwide and if you look at ANY independent comparisons of the networks (WiMax vs HSPA+) every single test proves t-mobile’s network is going to kill 4g in the near future. Don’t let the term 4g trick you into thinking that its the greatest thing in the world… do some homework.

Vin you are so right. There is no agency governing what is 3G or 4G. Sprint could say they have 5G and they wouldn’t be lying because it hasn’t been determined yet. I have held a contest with my friend that has the new 4G phone and mine surfs and browses the pages faster than hers. She has Sprint and I have T-Mobile.

[...] does look like AT&T will get some Android device from Samsung later this year. We have really high hopes for the Galaxy S so I’m crossing my fingers that AT&T does not try and cripple it like [...]

Getting so tired of all these custom UI crap, besides the N1, I don’t think there is a phone out or planned that doesn’t use some crappy pointless UI layer all over the phone. Just gimme a nice high end phone with stock android dammit.

Wow Super hardware!
Wow super phone!
Wow super battery life!
Wow HD recoding!
Wait! Is samsung… it means CRAPPY PHONE
Dont buy samsung, i had 2 phones about 500 euro, the first broken up the 2nd day i had in my hand, the 2nd is in assistance from 3 month..the dont have the right part. 500 euro and dont have the right one? Even with this, i can say really crappy sowtware, really bugged, with no update. In the moment you buy their phone, you r alone. no matter how many euro u give them. Think abou buyin super samsung phones..

I’ve been using Samsung SmartPhones for the last 3 years (i780 and Omnia2 i8000) and I’m pretty satisfied with the overall quality. Both working flawlessly and great support. I could not say the same about the previous 3 HTC devices I owned – CRAP.

I suppose anyone can have an opinion about brands, but definitely Samsung is making a huge effort to be better than HTC, and the Galaxy S is the first SmartPhone that is definitely much better than any other HTC phone (Memory, processor, applications, graphics, WiFi, and of course the most amazing screen around).

I have had HTC Pro, iPhone and the BB Bold 9000. When it came time for my upgrade last week, the vodafone operator asked me when I would like my iphone4 delivered. I said no thanks, gimme a galaxy S.

I did a whole lot of research before selecting this, and I have zero regrets. This is, hands down, the best smartphone I have ever seen, used or owned.

Why?

-super Amoled screen, has to be seen to be believed
-real world two day battery life with heavy use
-DLNA server (on a smartphone) and it works!
-Swype keyboard, really fast messaging. Better than the bold keyboard, really.
-Secure networking with WPA2/AES/Class N connection.
-bluetooth 3.0
- google maps in car navigation FOR FREE

I could go on, but basically, try this phione out for size.

The negatives:
-can be complicated to setup, not for newbies
-question marks over samsungs long-term support

And thats all. This phone is amazing, and I wouldn’t swap it for all the Evo’s, Incredibles or iPhoney4′s in the world.

Josh I agree with most of what you say, but the battery life. I fully charged mine overnight and mine warned me to recharge after just 8 hours of heavy use. The Wifi and screen drain that battery right down.

I have to admit, TouchWiz was the one reason I did not want a Galaxy. But with the stock shortages of the HTC Desire, I was forced to pick a next-best device – so I picked the Galaxy S.

TouchWiz 3? A new beast altogether from previous attempts. Actually, you can override the touchwiz easily if you don’t want it (that’s what I was going to do before I tried it).

The screen is also fitted with GorillaGlass – a fact that seems to be unpublished. This stuff is incredibly tough but doesn’t add any weight to the device. It’s practically scratchproof.

My only complaint is the battery since it sucks big time, though it’s still good for a smartphone I guess. The funny thing is; I’ve had a blackberry Storm before (1 and 2), it being a smartphone with similar uses (for me anyway) yet it gave 4-5 days easily even with heavy usage.

Yeah it did suck in those days. But now it’s super cool with Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread. Flash support, much snappier etc. I would recommend this phone to anyone. Yeah the TouchWiz 3.0 sucks, but there are so many alternative launchers on the Market. I’m using GoLauncherEX :D

[...] the fasted graphic processing unit of any other smarphone at the time. It also happened to be the thinnest smarphone avaiable. Fast forward to 2013, where the Galaxy S has reached over 24 million global [...]